The bastardized French that Justin Vernon has adopted as his stage name is entirely appropriate — Bon Iver makes music that reeks of winter. For Emma, Forever Ago is sparse, chilling and full of beauty. Recorded during a three-month stint in a remote Wisconsin cabin, the album perfectly captures the mix of restlessness and contentedness that can only come from isolation. The self-imposed exile was Vernon’s attempt to sort out his life after the breakup of his previous band, DeYarmond Edison, but the disorientation that prompted the album certainly doesn’t come through in the end product — For Emma is an assured and fully formed a debut.

Opener “Flume” sets the stage with carefully strummed guitar, joined by Vernon’s falsetto (more than a little reminiscent of TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe), but the attention to atmosphere is the most important element. Strings rattle and buzz, ambiance swells and disappears. At one point, the song itself drops away, leaving a clutter of background sounds that threaten to scurry away if kept in the spotlight for too long; it feels like an act of mercy when the guitar comes back in.

“Lump Sum” continues in the same vein, adding a driving rhythm and a chorus of Vernons to the formula, but maintaining the sense of restraint and care. It also showcases Vernon’s impressionistic approach to lyrics. He seems more concerned with the sound and feel of words than the meaning, leading to lines like “My mile could not/ Pump the plumb/ In my arbour till my ardour trumped every inner inertia,” or the variations on “in the back and the racks and the stacks of your load” that fill album-closer “Re: Stacks.” The meaning may be obscure, but the emotion isn’t — Vernon’s vocals drip with a natural soulfulness that’s impossible to confuse.

Don’t take away the impression that this is all stark and sombre, though. For Emma may work its way through loneliness and regret, but it doesn’t dwell. Nor does it aim for the easy catharsis that too many singer-songwriter types pursue. The lyrics are too oblique to hit that target. More than that, though, many of the songs revel in their isolation. “For Emma” even adds some (tasteful) horns, one of the few bits of post-production outside the original three-month recording. After all, even with the self-imposed isolation, Vernon still called it a good winter.